Most of us know aluminum is often strong enough to replace steel and light enough to use as cooking foil. Yet aluminum was once thought as more valuable than gold. What has changed? Why is one of the world’s “rarest” metals now used in more quantities than any metal except iron?
Today, aluminum fabricators use aluminum alloys to create parts for airplanes and automobiles, construction materials, commercial goods and much more. But these uses of aluminum are relatively new. Only in the last one-hundred years has the metal been used in mass production. This can be attributed to the Hall-Heroult process for extracting aluminum, patented in 1886. This electrolytic process uses large amounts of electricity to extract aluminum metal from aluminum oxide.
The electrolytic process is far more expensive than recycling, which requires only a fraction of the energy. This is one of the main reasons aluminum recycling is so useful and important. Before the extraction of aluminum was possible, the highly malleable metal was extremely rare in its free (metal) form.
Metal fabricators now shape aluminum for an incredible variety of functions. Using fabrication techniques such as CNC machining, stamping and cutting, they can create anything from computer parts, packaging and home appliances to locomotive and nautical components. To someone from the early nineteenth century, some of these uses might seem as strange as making a boat out of gold.